Star Trek Beyond - A Summer Blast

Star Trek Beyond is directed by Justin Lin, the man behind the most recent Fast and Furious films and the best I might add, and it stars all these people. All these people are in the movies you knew that already. Due to a series of catastrophic events to the Enterprise, it crash lands on a planet where all of the Enterprise crew are scattered as they try to survive from the evil wrath of Krall, played by Idris Elba who's after a very specific piece of technology that has been hidden away on the Enterprise for many years. His reasons for wanting this device are unclear, but what is absolutely crystal clear is that he's an evil person who is going to kill everybody and it's not good.

The trailers for this movie were underwhelming to say the least, and I'm a big star trek fan, so that's not good. Anyone who didn't give a shit about Star Trek definitely didn’t give a shit about this movie when they saw the trailers. The poster campaign however was awesome, the posters for this movie were really exciting so I didn't really know what to think.

I'll tell you what: this is proof positive once again that trailers really don't mean shit. Trailers are just a marketing tool to get us into the movie in the end though, what really matters is the film. And this one was damn GOOD, this surprised me, really big surprise. Star Trek beyond is an absolute blast, I was entertained from opening to close. This was a ton of fun in the theatre, a big summer blockbuster with all the things you want to see. Explosions and fun action sequences, good characters with good humour, and a respect for the original. This movie is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, and it does it very well, not only because it's a very entertaining, fast-paced Star Trek adventure but because it does pay respect to the original cast to the original crew.

It does have an affinity for it and you can feel it through almost every scene in this movie, a few in particular that actually made me tear up, and it was a happy cry, it was just like a warm, good feeling that you don't get that often in movies. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are both once again fantastic as Kirk and Spock. I loved seeing these characters on the screen, but what I really liked about Beyond is that the previous two films have really explored Kirk and Spock’s relationship, so this one really gave a lot of time to Spock and Bones played by Karl Urban, because these two characters get separated from everyone else and they have to make their way through this wilderness of this odd planet there on, and they have a lot of dialogue together, and the dialogue for them is really good classic Spock and Bones stuff, and a lot of this is written by Simon Pegg, and his writing partner, and I was genuinely very impressed with their writing because this movie has a great feeling of character. Because the most important things about the Star Trek movies no matter what you want to say, it's the characters.

Star Trek movies stopped being very original a long time ago because there's really only so much you can do with a space ship and a crew and aliens and the galaxy and stuff. What makes these movies special are the characters, what keeps us coming back to these movies are the characters. And this movie is well aware that because there's a ton of character depth woven throughout this movie, it's not just a lot of fun action, it is a damn entertaining movie that knows how to be a summer blockbuster, but also build character and that is great to see.

Idris Elba plays the main bad guy of this movie and of course he’s Idris Elba, so he's pretty badass as this character. The character is not given quite as much depth as you would want for a long portion of the movie, and for the majority of the movie I was like ‘eh he's fine as a character’ Idris Elba was great as his character, he did a lot of really cool stuff with his voice, I don't know how much of that was post sound work. I thought he was great as this menacing person who's after this device and you bought into his character, but there wasn't much going on there, and you were sort of murky on his entire motivation. Until the third act, (no spoilers) but then I was like ‘OH okay there's ok yeah I can get behind that’ so when you're watching this movie during the first two acts, if you're feeling like he's kind of a ‘Eh’ villain, wait, patience is a virtue. But easily my favourite new edition of this movie is the character of Jaylah. This is one badass woman, oh my god she was cool, I loved her character, she looked awesome, the makeup work was fantastic, she was a fun character that had good humour woven throughout her, but she could also kick a lot of ass which is really fun to see but she was never annoying, she never overstayed her welcome, there wasn't anything about her character that bug me she was just awesome.

So do I like this one as much as the other two? No I don't, I think it's my least favourite of this trilogy for a few reasons number. One being that the first act is a bit meandering, it takes a while to get the movie really going at least for me. There are fun things to look at and it's never boring, but it just didn't hook me until the second act. And then the third act got even better, this is that rare movie where each act builds upon the last and for me, got better as it went along that's hard to do. Usually a movie peaks at one point or peaks at the end but isn't that good in the beginning or peaks in the middle or something. This movie has a steady incline of awesomeness. Justin Lin genuinely surprised me, the action is not quite as intense and laser edged in regards to how visceral JJ Abrams directs his films, but the smaller character moments are well realized, the script respects the original characters as well as these new characters and understands the Star Trek mythos, and understands how to make a fun Star Trek movie. This is an extremely good and fun Star Trek film that for me wasn't quite as good as those first two, and does not have as compelling a villain as Benedict Cumberbatch was in Into Darkness, but Star Trek Beyond was a blast it's a very good Summer movie and it's an overall good Star Trek movie.

Grade - A-

Also I just want to say, rest in peace Leonard Nimoy you are a legend, and rest in peace Anton Yelchin, gone way too soon.